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Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
Ecofascism: Lessons fromthe German Experience
1996
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2Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Fascist Ecology: The Green Wing of the Nazi Party and
itsHistorical Antecedentsby Peter Staudenmaier . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5The
Roots of the Blood and Soil Mystique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . 6The Youth Movement and the Weimar Era . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Nature in National
Socialist Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . 14Blood and Soil as Ocial Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Implementing the
Ecofascist Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . 19Fascist Ecology in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Ecology and the Modernization of Fascism in the
GermanUltra-rightby Janet Biehl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26Neofascist Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
National Revolutionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30The Freedom German Workers Party .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32The Republicans .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . 34The National Democratic Party . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34The German Peoples Union .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
35Anthroposophy and the World League for the Protection of Life . .
. . 36
Rudolf Bahro: Vlkisch Spirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Liberating the Brown Parts . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
47Social Darwinist Ecology: Herbert Gruhl . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . 52A Social Ecology of Freedom . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
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3Introduction
For most compassionate and humane people today, the ecological
crisis isa source of major concern. Not only do many ecological
activists struggle toeliminate toxic wastes, to preserve tropical
rainforests and old-growth redwoods,and to roll back the
destruction of the biosphere, but many ordinary people inall walks
of life are intensely concerned about the nature of the planet that
theirchildren will grow up to inhabit. In Europe as in the United
States, most ecologicalactivists think of themselves as socially
progressive. That is, they also supportdemands of oppressed peoples
for social justice and believe that the needs ofhuman beings living
in poverty, illness, warfare, and famine also require our
mostserious attention.
For many such people, it may come as a surprise to learn that
the history ofecological politics has not always been inherently
and necessarily progressive andbenign. In fact, ecological ideas
have a history of being distorted and placed in theservice of
highly regressive ends even of fascism itself. As Peter
Staudenmaiershows in the rst essay in this pamphlet, important
tendencies in German ecolo-gism, which has long roots in
nineteenth-century nature mysticism, fed into therise of Nazism in
the twentieth century. During the Third Reich, Staudenmaiergoes on
to show, Nazi ecologists even made organic farming,
vegetarianism,nature worship, and related themes into key elements
not only in their ideologybut in their governmental policies.
Moreover, Nazi ecological ideology wasused to justify the
destruction of European Jewry. Yet some of the themes thatNazi
ideologists articulated bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to
themesfamiliar to ecologically concerned people today.
As social ecologists, it is not our intention to deprecate the
all-important eortsthat environmentalists and ecologists are making
to rescue the biosphere fromdestruction. Quite to the contrary: It
is our deepest concern to preserve theintegrity of serious
ecological movements from ugly reactionary tendencies thatseek to
exploit the widespread popular concern about ecological problems
forregressive agendas. But we nd that the ecological scene of our
time withits growing mysticism and antihumanism poses serious
problems about thedirection in which the ecology movement will
go.
In most Western nations in the late twentieth century,
expressions of racismand anti-immigrant sentiments are not only
increasingly voiced but increasinglytolerated. Equally
disconcertingly, fascist ideologists and political groups
areexperiencing a resurgence as well. Updating their ideology and
speaking thenew language of ecology, these movements are once again
invoking ecological
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4themes to serve social reaction. In ways that sometimes
approximate beliefs ofprogressive-minded ecologists, these
reactionary and outright fascist ecologistsemphasize the supremacy
of the Earth over people; evoke feelings and in-tuition at the
expense of reason; and uphold a crude sociobiologistic and
evenMalthusian biologism. Tenets of New Age eco-ideology that seem
benign tomost people in England and the United States specically,
its mystical andantirational strains are being intertwined with
ecofascism in Germany today.Janet Biehls essay explores this
hijacking of ecology for racist, nationalistic, andfascist
ends.
Taken together, these essays examine aspects of German fascism,
past andpresent, in order to draw lessons from them for ecology
movements both in Ger-many and elsewhere. Despite its
singularities, the German experience oers aclear warning against
the misuse of ecology, in a world that seems ever more will-ing to
tolerate movements and ideologies once regarded as despicable and
obsolete.Political ecology thinkers have yet to fully examine the
political implications ofthese ideas in the English-speaking world
as well as in Germany.
What prevents ecological politics from yielding reaction or
fascism with anecological patina is an ecology movement that
maintains a broad social emphasis,one that places the ecological
crisis in a social context. As social ecologists, wesee the roots
of the present ecological crisis in an irrational society not in
thebiological makeup of human beings, nor in a particular religion,
nor in reason,science, or technology. On the contrary, we uphold
the importance of reason,science, and technology in creating both a
progressive ecological movement andan ecological society. It is a
specic set of social relations above all, the com-petitive market
economy that is presently destroying the biosphere. Mysticismand
biologism, at the very least, deect public attention away from such
socialcauses. In presenting these essays, we are trying to preserve
the all-importantprogressive and emancipatory implications of
ecological politics. More than ever,an ecological commitment
requires people today to avoid repeating the errorsof the past,
lest the ecology movement become absorbed in the mystical
andantihumanistic trends that abound today.
J.B.P.S.
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5Fascist Ecology: The Green Wing of theNazi Party and its
Historical Antecedentsby Peter Staudenmaier
We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the
whole of life,leads to humankinds own destruction and to the death
of nations. Onlythrough a re-integration of humanity into the whole
of nature can our peoplebe made stronger. That is the fundamental
point of the biological tasks of ourage. Humankind alone is no
longer the focus of thought, but rather life as awhole . . . This
striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, withnature
itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest
meaningand the true essence of National Socialist thought.1
In our zeal to condemn the status quo, radicals often carelessly
toss aboutepithets like fascist and ecofascist, thus contributing
to a sort of conceptualination that in no way furthers eective
social critique. In such a situation, itis easy to overlook the
fact that there are still virulent strains of fascism in
ourpolitical culture which, however marginal, demand our attention.
One of theleast recognized or understood of these strains is the
phenomenon one mightcall actually existing ecofascism, that is, the
preoccupation of authenticallyfascist movements with
environmentalist concerns. In order to grasp the peculiarintensity
and endurance of this aliation, we would do well to examine
moreclosely its most notorious historical incarnation, the
so-called green wing ofGerman National Socialism.
Despite an extensive documentary record, the subject remains an
elusive one,underappreciated by professional historians and
environmental activists alike. InEnglish-speaking countries as well
as in Germany itself, the very existence of agreen wing in the Nazi
movement, much less its inspiration, goals, and conse-quences, has
yet to be adequately researched and analyzed. Most of the handfulof
available interpretations succumb to either an alarming
intellectual anity
1 Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer
Arbeit im neuen Reich, Mnchen,1934, pp. 1011. Lehmann was a
professor of botany who characterized National Socialism
aspolitically applied biology.
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6with their subject.2 or a naive refusal to examine the full
extent of the ideolog-ical overlap between nature conservation and
National Socialism.3 This articlepresents a brief and necessarily
schematic overview of the ecological componentsof Nazism,
emphasizing both their central role in Nazi ideology and their
practicalimplementation during the Third Reich. A preliminary
survey of nineteenth andtwentieth century precursors to classical
ecofascism should serve to illuminatethe conceptual underpinnings
common to all forms of reactionary ecology.
Two initial clarications are in order. First, the terms
environmental andecological are here used more or less
interchangeably to denote ideas, attitudes,and practices commonly
associated with the contemporary environmental move-ment. This is
not an anachronism; it simply indicates an interpretive
approachwhich highlights connections to present-day concerns.
Second, this approachis not meant to endorse the
historiographically discredited notion that pre-1933historical data
can or should be read as leading inexorably to the Nazi
calamity.Rather, our concern here is with discerning ideological
continuities and tracingpolitical genealogies, in an attempt to
understand the past in light of our currentsituation to make
history relevant to the present social and ecological crisis.
The Roots of the Blood and Soil Mystique
Germany is not only the birthplace of the science of ecology and
the site ofGreen politics rise to prominence; it has also been home
to a peculiar synthesis ofnaturalism and nationalism forged under
the inuence of the Romantic traditionsanti-Enlightenment
irrationalism. Two nineteenth century gures exemplify thisominous
conjunction: Ernst Moritz Arndt and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl.
While best known in Germany for his fanatical nationalism, Arndt
was alsodedicated to the cause of the peasantry, which lead him to
a concern for the wel-fare of the land itself. Historians of German
environmentalism mention him asthe earliest example of ecological
thinking in the modern sense.4 His remarkable1815 article On the
Care and Conservation of Forests, written at the dawn of
indus-trialization in Central Europe, rails against shortsighted
exploitation of woodlandsand soil, condemning deforestation and its
economic causes. At times he wrote
2 Anna Bramwell, author of the only book-length study on the
subject, is exemplary in this respect.See her Blood and Soil:
Walther Darr and Hitlers Green Party, Bourne End, 1985, and Ecology
inthe 20th Century: A History, New Haven, 1989.
3 See Raymond H. Dominick, The Environmental Movement in
Germany: Prophets and Pioneers,18711971, Bloomington, 1992,
especially part three, The Vlkisch Temptation.
4 For example, Dominick,The Environmental Movement in Germany, ,
p. 22; and Jost Hermand, GrneUtopien in Deutschland: Zur Geschichte
des kologischen Bewutseins, Frankfurt, 1991, pp. 4445.
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7in terms strikingly similar to those of contemporary
biocentrism: When onesees nature in a necessary connectedness and
interrelationship, then all thingsare equally important shrub,
worm, plant, human, stone, nothing rst or last,but all one single
unity.5
Arndts environmentalism, however, was inextricably bound up with
virulentlyxenophobic nationalism. His eloquent and prescient
appeals for ecological sen-sitivity were couched always in terms of
the well-being of the German soil andthe German people, and his
repeated lunatic polemics against miscegenation, de-mands for
teutonic racial purity, and epithets against the French, Slavs, and
Jewsmarked every aspect of his thought. At the very outset of the
nineteenth centurythe deadly connection between love of land and
militant racist nationalism wasrmly set in place.
Riehl, a student of Arndt, further developed this sinister
tradition. In some re-spects his green streak went signicantly
deeper than Arndts; presaging certaintendencies in recent
environmental activism, his 1853 essay Field and Forest endedwith a
call to ght for the rights of wilderness. But even here nationalist
pathosset the tone: We must save the forest, not only so that our
ovens do not becomecold in winter, but also so that the pulse of
life of the people continues to beatwarm and joyfully, so that
Germany remains German.6 Riehl was an implacableopponent of the
rise of industrialism and urbanization; his overtly antisemitic
glo-rication of rural peasant values and undierentiated
condemnation of modernityestablished him as the founder of agrarian
romanticism and anti-urbanism.7
These latter two xations matured in the second half of the
nineteenth centuryin the context of the vlkisch movement, a
powerful cultural disposition andsocial tendency which united
ethnocentric populism with nature mysticism. Atthe heart of the
vlkisch temptation was a pathological response to modernity.In the
face of the very real dislocations brought on by the triumph of
industrialcapitalism and national unication, vlkisch thinkers
preached a return to theland, to the simplicity and wholeness of a
life attuned to natures purity. Themystical eusiveness of this
perverted utopianism was matched by its politicalvulgarity. While
the Volkish movement aspired to reconstruct the society thatwas
sanctioned by history, rooted in nature, and in communion with the
cosmic
5 Quoted in Rudolf Krgel, Der Begri des Volksgeistes in Ernst
Moritz Arndts Geschichtsanschauung,Langensalza, 1914, p. 18.
6 Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Feld und Wald, Stuttgart, 1857, p.
52.7 Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Grostadtfeindschaft,
Meisenheim, 1970, p. 38. There is no
satisfactory English counterpart to Grostadtfeindschaft, a term
which signies hostility to thecosmopolitanism, internationalism,
and cultural tolerance of cities as such. This anti-urbanismis the
precise opposite of the careful critique of urbanization worked out
by Murray Bookchin inUrbanization Without Cities, Montral, 1992,
andThe Limits of the City, Montral, 1986.
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8life spirit,8 it pointedly refused to locate the sources of
alienation, rootlessnessand environmental destruction in social
structures, laying the blame instead torationalism,
cosmopolitanism, and urban civilization. The stand-in for all of
thesewas the age-old object of peasant hatred and middle-class
resentment: the Jews.TheGermanswere in search of amysterious
wholeness that would restore them toprimeval happiness, destroying
the hostile milieu of urban industrial civilizationthat the Jewish
conspiracy had foisted on them.9
Reformulating traditional German antisemitism into
nature-friendly terms, thevlkisch movement carried a volatile
amalgam of nineteenth century cultural prej-udices, Romantic
obsessions with purity, and anti-Enlightenment sentiment
intotwentieth century political discourse. The emergence of modern
ecology forgedthe nal link in the fateful chain which bound
together aggressive nationalism,mystically charged racism, and
environmentalist predilections. In 1867 the Ger-man zoologist Ernst
Haeckel coined the term ecology and began to establish itas a
scientic discipline dedicated to studying the interactions between
organismand environment. Haeckel was also the chief popularizer of
Darwin and evolu-tionary theory for the German-speaking world, and
developed a peculiar sortof social darwinist philosophy he called
monism. The German Monist Leaguehe founded combined scientically
based ecological holism with vlkisch socialviews. Haeckel believed
in nordic racial superiority, strenuously opposed racemixing and
enthusiastically supported racial eugenics. His fervent
nationalismbecame fanatical with the onset of World War I, and he
fulminated in antisemitictones against the post-war Council
Republic in Bavaria.
In this way Haeckel contributed to that special variety of
German thoughtwhich served as the seed bed for National Socialism.
He became one of Germanysmajor ideologists for racism, nationalism
and imperialism.10 Near the end of hislife he joined the Thule
Society, a secret, radically right-wing organization whichplayed a
key role in the establishment of the Nazi movement.11 But more
thanmerely personal continuities are at stake here. The pioneer of
scientic ecology,along with his disciples Willibald Hentschel,
Wilhelm Blsche and Bruno Wille,profoundly shaped the thinking of
subsequent generations of environmentalistsby embedding concern for
the natural world in a tightly woven web of regressive
8 George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual
Origins of the Third Reich, New York, 1964,p. 29.
9 Lucy Dawidowicz,The War Against the Jews 19331945, New York,
1975, pp. 6162.10 Daniel Gasman,The Scientic Origins of National
Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and
the German Monist League, New York, 1971, p. xvii.11 ibid., p.
30. Gasmans thesis about the politics of Monism is hardly
uncontroversial; the books
central argument, however, is sound.
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9social themes. From its very beginnings, then, ecology was
bound up in anintensely reactionary political framework.
The specic contours of this early marriage of ecology and
authoritarian socialviews are highly instructive. At the center of
this ideological complex is the direct,unmediated application of
biological categories to the social realm. Haeckelheld that
civilization and the life of nations are governed by the same laws
asprevail throughout nature and organic life.12 This notion of
natural laws ornatural order has long been a mainstay of
reactionary environmental thought.Its concomitant is
anti-humanism:
Thus, for the Monists, perhaps the most pernicious feature of
Europeanbourgeois civilization was the inated importance which it
attached to theidea of man in general, to his existence and to his
talents, and to the beliefthat through his unique rational
faculties man could essentially recreatethe world and bring about a
universally more harmonious and ethically justsocial order.
[Humankind was] an insignicant creature when viewed as partof and
measured against the vastness of the cosmos and the
overwhelmingforces of nature.13
Other Monists extended this anti-humanist emphasis and mixed it
with thetraditional vlkisch motifs of indiscriminate
anti-industrialism and anti-urbanismas well as the newly emerging
pseudo-scientic racism. The linchpin, once again,was the conation
of biological and social categories. The biologist Raoul
Franc,founding member of the Monist League, elaborated so-called
Lebensgesetze, lawsof life through which the natural order
determines the social order. He opposedracial mixing, for example,
as unnatural. Franc is acclaimed by contemporaryecofascists as a
pioneer of the ecology movement.14
Francs colleague Ludwig Woltmann, another student of Haeckel,
insisted ona biological interpretation for all societal phenomena,
from cultural attitudes toeconomic arrangements. He stressed the
supposed connection between environ-mental purity and racial
purity: Woltmann took a negative attitude towardmodern
industrialism. He claimed that the change from an agrarian to an
indus-trial society had hastened the decline of the race. In
contrast to nature, whichengendered the harmonic forms of
Germanism, there were the big cities, diabolicaland inorganic,
destroying the virtues of the race.15
12 Quoted in Gasman,The Scientic Origins of National Socialism,
p. 34.13 ibid., p. 33.14 See the foreword to the 1982 reprint of
his 1923 book Die Entdeckung der Heimat, published by the
far-right MUT Verlag.15 Mosse,The Crisis of German Ideology, p.
101.
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10
Thus by the early years of the twentieth century a certain type
of ecologi-cal argumentation, saturated with right-wing political
content, had attained ameasure of respectability within the
political culture of Germany. During theturbulent period
surroundingWorldWar I, the mixture of ethnocentric
fanaticism,regressive rejection of modernity and genuine
environmental concern proved tobe a very potent potion indeed.
The Youth Movement and the Weimar Era
The chief vehicle for carrying this ideological constellation to
prominence wasthe youth movement, an amorphous phenomenon which
played a decisive buthighly ambivalent role in shaping German
popular culture during the rst threetumultuous decades of this
century. Also known as theWandervgel (which trans-lates roughly as
wandering free spirits), the youth movement was a hodge-podgeof
countercultural elements, blending neo-Romanticism, Eastern
philosophies,nature mysticism, hostility to reason, and a strong
communal impulse in a con-fused but no less ardent search for
authentic, non-alienated social relations. Theirback-to-the-land
emphasis spurred a passionate sensitivity to the natural worldand
the damage it suered. They have been aptly characterized as
right-winghippies, for although some sectors of the movement
gravitated toward variousforms of emancipatory politics (though
usually shedding their environmentalisttrappings in the process),
most of theWandervgel were eventually absorbed bythe Nazis. This
shift from nature worship to Fhrer worship is worth examining.
The various strands of the youth movement shared a common
self-conception:they were a purportedly non-political response to a
deep cultural crisis, stressingthe primacy of direct emotional
experience over social critique and action. Theypushed the
contradictions of their time to the breaking point, but were
unableor unwilling to take the nal step toward organized, focused
social rebellion,convinced that the changes they wanted to eect in
society could not be broughtabout by political means, but only by
the improvement of the individual.16 Thisproved to be a fatal
error. Broadly speaking, two ways of revolt were open tothem: they
could have pursued their radical critique of society, which in
duecourse would have brought them into the camp of social
revolution. [But] theWandervgel chose the other form of protest
against society romanticism.17
16 Walter Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth
Movement, New York, 1962, p.41.17 ibid., p. 6. For a concise
portrait of the youth movement which draws similiar conclusions,
see John
De Graaf, The Wandervogel, CoEvolution Quarterly, Fall 1977, pp.
1421.
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11
This posture lent itself all too readily to a very dierent kind
of political mobi-lization: the unpolitical zealotry of fascism.
The youth movement did not simplyfail in its chosen form of
protest, it was actively realigned when its members wentover to the
Nazis by the thousands. Its countercultural energies and its
dreamsof harmony with nature bore the bitterest fruit. This is,
perhaps, the unavoid-able trajectory of any movement which
acknowledges and opposes social andecological problems but does not
recognize their systemic roots or actively resistthe political and
economic structures which generate them. Eschewing
societaltransformation in favor of personal change, an ostensibly
apolitical disaectioncan, in times of crisis, yield barbaric
results.
The attraction such perspectives exercised on idealistic youth
is clear: theenormity of the crisis seemed to enjoin a total
rejection of its apparent causes. Itis in the specic form of this
rejection that the danger lies. Here thework of severalmore
theoretical minds from the period is instructive. The philosopher
LudwigKlages profoundly inuenced the youth movement and
particularly shaped theirecological consciousness. He authored a
tremendously important essay titledMan and Earth for the legendary
Meissner gathering of the Wandervgel in1913.18 An extraordinarily
poignant text and the best known of all Klages work,it is not only
one of the very greatest manifestoes of the radical
ecopacistmovement in Germany,19 but also a classic example of the
seductive terminologyof reactionary ecology.
Man and Earth anticipated just about all of the themes of the
contemporaryecology movement. It decried the accelerating
extinction of species, disturbanceof global ecosystemic balance,
deforestation, destruction of aboriginal peoplesand of wild
habitats, urban sprawl, and the increasing alienation of people
fromnature. In emphatic terms it disparaged Christianity,
capitalism, economic utilitar-ianism, hyperconsumption and the
ideology of progress. It even condemned theenvironmental
destructiveness of rampant tourism and the slaughter of whales,and
displayed a clear recognition of the planet as an ecological
totality. All of thisin 1913 !
It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Klages was
throughout his lifepolitically archconservative and a venomous
antisemite. One historian labels hima Volkish fanatic and another
considers him simply an intellectual pacemakerfor theThird Reich
who paved the way for fascist philosophy in many important
18 Reprinted in Ludwig Klages, Smtliche Werke, Band 3, Bonn,
1974, pp. 614630. No Englishtranslation is available.
19 Ulrich Linse, kopax und Anarchie. Eine Geschichte der
kologischen Bewegungen in Deutschland,Mnchen, 1986, p. 60.
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12
respects.20 In Man and Earth a genuine outrage at the
devastation of the nat-ural environment is coupled with a political
subtext of cultural despair.21 Klagesdiagnosis of the ills of
modern society, for all its declamations about capitalism,returns
always to a single culprit: Geist. His idiosyncratic use of this
term, whichmeans mind or intellect, was meant to denounce not only
hyperrationalism orinstrumental reason, but rational thought
itself. Such a wholesale indictmentof reason cannot help but have
savage political implications. It forecloses anychance of
rationally reconstructing societys relationship with nature and
justiesthe most brutal authoritarianism. But the lessons of Klages
life and work havebeen hard for ecologists to learn. In 1980, Man
and Earth was republished as anesteemed and seminal treatise to
accompany the birth of the German Greens.
Another philosopher and stern critic of Enlightenment who helped
bridgefascism and environmentalism was Martin Heidegger. A much
more renownedthinker than Klages, Heidegger preached authentic
Being and harshly criticizedmodern technology, and is therefore
often celebrated as a precursor of ecologicalthinking. On the basis
of his critique of technology and rejection of
humanism,contemporary deep ecologists have elevated Heidegger to
their pantheon of eco-heroes:
Heideggers critique of anthropocentric humanism, his call for
humanityto learn to let things be, his notion that humanity is
involved in a playor dance with earth, sky, and gods, his
meditation on the possibility ofan authentic mode of dwelling on
the earth, his complaint that industrialtechnology is laying waste
to the earth, his emphasis on the importanceof local place and
homeland, his claim that humanity should guard andpreserve things,
instead of dominating them all these aspects of Heideg-gers thought
help to support the claim that he is a major deep
ecologicaltheorist.22
Such eusions are, at best, dangerously naive. They suggest a
style of thoughtutterly oblivious to the history of fascist
appropriations of all the elements thequoted passage praises in
Heidegger. (To his credit, the author of the above lines,a major
deep ecological theorist in his own right, has since changed his
positionand eloquently urged his colleagues to do the same.)23 As
for the philosopher of
20 Mosse,The Crisis of German Ideology, p. 211, and Laqueur,
Young Germany, p. 34.21 See Fritz Stern,The Politics of Cultural
Despair, Berkeley, 1963.22 Michael Zimmerman, Heideggers
Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics and Art,
Indi-
anapolis, 1990, pp. 242243.23 See Michael Zimmerman, Rethinking
the Heidegger Deep Ecology Relationship, Environmental
Ethics vol. 15, no. 3 (Fall 1993), pp. 195224.
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13
Being himself, he was unlike Klages, who lived in Switzerland
after 1915 anactive member of the Nazi party and for a time
enthusiastically, even adoringlysupported the Fhrer. His mystical
panegyrics to Heimat (homeland) were com-plemented by a deep
antisemitism, and his metaphysically phrased broadsidesagainst
technology and modernity converged neatly with populist
demagogy.Although he lived and taught for thirty years after the
fall of the Third Reich,Heidegger never once publicly regretted,
much less renounced, his involvementwith National Socialism, nor
even perfunctorily condemned its crimes. His work,whatever its
philosophical merits, stands today as a signal admonition about
thepolitical uses of anti-humanism in ecological garb.
In addition to the youth movement and protofascist philosophies,
there were,of course, practical eorts at protecting natural
habitats during theWeimar period.Many of these projects were
profoundly implicated in the ideology which culmi-nated in the
victory of Blood and Soil. A 1923 recruitment pitch for a
woodlandspreservation outt gives a sense of the environmental
rhetoric of the time:
In every German breast the German forest quivers with its
caverns andravines, crags and boulders, waters and winds, legends
and fairy tales, withits songs and its melodies, and awakens a
powerful yearning and a longingfor home; in all German souls the
German forest lives and weaves with itsdepth and breadth, its
stillness and strength, its might and dignity, its richesand its
beauty it is the source of German inwardness, of the German soul,of
German freedom. Therefore protect and care for the German forest
forthe sake of the elders and the youth, and join the new German
League forthe Protection and Consecration of the German
Forest.24
The mantra-like repetition of the word German and the mystical
depictionof the sacred forest fuse together, once again,
nationalism and naturalism. Thisintertwinement took on a grisly
signicance with the collapse of the Weimarrepublic. For alongside
such relatively innocuous conservation groups, anotherorganization
was growing which oered these ideas a hospitable home: theNational
Socialist GermanWorkers Party, known by its acronymNSDAP. Drawingon
the heritage of Arndt, Riehl, Haeckel, and others (all of whom were
honoredbetween 1933 and 1945 as forebears of triumphant National
Socialism), the Nazimovements incorporation of environmentalist
themes was a crucial factor in itsrise to popularity and state
power.
24 Reproduced in Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Auf der Suche nach
Arkadien,Mnchen, 1990, p. 147.
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14
Nature in National Socialist Ideology
The reactionary ecological ideas whose outlines are sketched
above exerteda powerful and lasting inuence on many of the central
gures in the NSDAP.Weimar culture, after all, was fairly awash in
such theories, but the Nazis gavethem a peculiar inection. The
National Socialist religion of nature, as onehistorian has
described it, was a volatile admixture of primeval teutonic
naturemysticism, pseudo-scientic ecology, irrationalist
anti-humanism, and a mythol-ogy of racial salvation through a
return to the land. Its predominant themeswere natural order,
organicist holism and denigration of humanity: Throughoutthe
writings, not only of Hitler, but of most Nazi ideologues, one can
discern afundamental deprecation of humans vis--vis nature, and, as
a logical corollary tothis, an attack upon human eorts to master
nature.25 Quoting a Nazi educator,the same source continues:
anthropocentric views in general had to be rejected.They would be
valid only if it is assumed that nature has been created only
forman. We decisively reject this attitude. According to our
conception of nature,man is a link in the living chain of nature
just as any other organism.26
Such arguments have a chilling currency within contemporary
ecological dis-course: the key to social-ecological harmony is
ascertaining the eternal laws ofnatures processes (Hitler) and
organizing society to correspond to them. TheFhrer was particularly
fond of stressing the helplessness of humankind in theface of
natures everlasting law.27 Echoing Haeckel and the Monists, Mein
Kampfannounces: When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic
of nature, theycome into conict with the very same principles to
which they owe their existenceas human beings. Their actions
against nature must lead to their own downfall.28
The authoritarian implications of this view of humanity and
nature becomeeven clearer in the context of the Nazis emphasis on
holism and organicism. In1934 the director of the Reich Agency for
Nature Protection, Walter Schoenichen,established the following
objectives for biology curricula: Very early, the youthmust develop
an understanding of the civic importance of the organism, i.e.
theco-ordination of all parts and organs for the benet of the one
and superior task
25 Robert Pois, National Socialism and the Religion of Nature,
London, 1985, p. 40.26 ibid., pp. 4243. The internal quote is taken
from George Mosse, Nazi Culture, New York, 1965, p.
87.27 Hitler, in Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgesprche im
Fhrerhauptquartier 19411942, Stuttgart, 1963, p.
151.28 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf,Mnchen, 1935, p. 314.
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15
of life.29 This (by now familiar) unmediated adaptation of
biological conceptsto social phenomena served to justify not only
the totalitarian social order ofthe Third Reich but also the
expansionist politics of Lebensraum (the plan ofconquering living
space in Eastern Europe for the German people). It alsoprovided the
link between environmental purity and racial purity:
Two central themes of biology education follow [according to the
Nazis] fromthe holistic perspective: nature protection and
eugenics. If one views natureas a unied whole, students will
automatically develop a sense for ecologyand environmental
conservation. At the same time, the nature protectionconcept will
direct attention to the urbanized and overcivilized modernhuman
race.30
In many varieties of the National Socialist world view
ecological themes werelinked with traditional agrarian romanticism
and hostility to urban civilization, allrevolving around the idea
of rootedness in nature. This conceptual constellation,especially
the search for a lost connection to nature, was most pronounced
amongthe neo-pagan elements in the Nazi leadership, above all
Heinrich Himmler, AlfredRosenberg, and Walther Darr. Rosenberg
wrote in his colossalThe Myth of the20th Century: Today we see the
steady stream from the countryside to the city,deadly for the Volk.
The cities swell ever larger, unnerving the Volk and destroyingthe
threads which bind humanity to nature; they attract adventurers and
proteersof all colors, thereby fostering racial chaos.31
Such musings, it must be stressed, were not mere rhetoric; they
reected rmlyheld beliefs and, indeed, practices at the very top of
the Nazi hierarchy which aretoday conventionally associated with
ecological attitudes. Hitler and Himmlerwere both strict
vegetarians and animal lovers, attracted to nature mysticismand
homeopathic cures, and staunchly opposed to vivisection and cruelty
toanimals. Himmler even established experimental organic farms to
grow herbs forSS medicinal purposes. And Hitler, at times, could
sound like a veritable Greenutopian, discussing authoritatively and
in detail various renewable energy sources(including
environmentally appropriate hydropower and producing natural
gasfrom sludge) as alternatives to coal, and declaring water, winds
and tides as theenergy path of the future.32
29 Quoted in Gert Grning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Politics,
planning and the protection ofnature: political abuse of early
ecological ideas in Germany, 19331945, Planning Perspectives
2(1987), p. 129.
30 nne Bumer, NS-Biologie, Stuttgart, 1990, p. 198.31 Alfred
Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, Mnchen, 1938, p. 550.
Rosenberg was, in the
early years at least, the chief ideologist of the Nazi
movement.
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16
Even in the midst of war, Nazi leaders maintained their
commitment to ecolog-ical ideals which were, for them, an essential
element of racial rejuvenation. InDecember 1942, Himmler released a
decree On the Treatment of the Land in theEastern Territories,
referring to the newly annexed portions of Poland. It read
inpart:
The peasant of our racial stock has always carefully endeavored
to increasethe natural powers of the soil, plants, and animals, and
to preserve thebalance of the whole of nature. For him, respect for
divine creation is themeasure of all culture. If, therefore, the
new Lebensrume (living spaces)are to become a homeland for our
settlers, the planned arrangement of thelandscape to keep it close
to nature is a decisive prerequisite. It is one of thebases for
fortifying the German Volk.33
This passage recapitulates almost all of the tropes comprised by
classical eco-fascist ideology: Lebensraum, Heimat, the agrarian
mystique, the health of theVolk, closeness to and respect for
nature (explicitly constructed as the standardagainst which society
is to be judged), maintaining natures precarious balance,and the
earthy powers of the soil and its creatures. Such motifs were
anythingbut personal idiosyncracies on the part of Hitler, Himmler,
or Rosenberg; evenGring who was, along with Goebbels, the member of
the Nazi inner circleleast hospitable to ecological ideas appeared
at times to be a committed conser-vationist.34 These sympathies
were also hardly restricted to the upper echelonsof the party. A
study of the membership rolls of several mainstream Weimarera
Naturschutz (nature protection) organizations revealed that by
1939, fully60 percent of these conservationists had joined the
NSDAP (compared to about10 percent of adult men and 25 percent of
teachers and lawyers).35 Clearly theanities between
environmentalism and National Socialism ran deep.
At the level of ideology, then, ecological themes played a vital
role in Germanfascism. It would be a grave mistake, however, to
treat these elements as merepropaganda, cleverly deployed to mask
Nazisms true character as a technocratic-industrialist juggernaut.
The denitive history of German anti-urbanism andagrarian
romanticism argues incisively against this view:
32 Picker, Hitlers Tischgesprche, pp. 139140.33 Quoted in Heinz
Haushofer, Ideengeschichte der Agrarwirtschaft und Agrarpolitik im
deutschen
Sprachgebiet, Band II, Mnchen, 1958, p. 266.34 See Dominick,The
Environmental Movement in Germany, p. 107.35 ibid., p. 113.
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17
Nothing could be more wrong than to suppose that most of the
leadingNational Socialist ideologues had cynically feigned an
agrarian romanticismand hostility to urban culture, without any
inner conviction and for merelyelectoral and propaganda purposes,
in order to hoodwink the public [ . . . ]In reality, the majority
of the leading National Socialist ideologists werewithout any doubt
more or less inclined to agrarian romanticism and anti-urbanism and
convinced of the need for a relative re-agrarianization.36
The question remains, however: To what extent did the Nazis
actually im-plement environmental policies during the twelve-year
Reich? There is strongevidence that the ecological tendency in the
party, though largely ignored today,had considerable success for
most of the partys reign. This green wing of theNSDAP was
represented above all by Walther Darr, Fritz Todt, Alwin Seifert
andRudolf Hess, the four gures who primarily shaped fascist ecology
in practice.
Blood and Soil as Ocial Doctrine
The unity of blood and soil must be restored, proclaimed Richard
WaltherDarr in 1930.37 This infamous phrase denoted a
quasi-mystical connection be-tween blood (the race or Volk) and
soil (the land and the natural environment)specic to Germanic
peoples and absent, for example, among Celts and Slavs. Forthe
enthusiasts of Blut und Boden, the Jews especially were a rootless,
wanderingpeople, incapable of any true relationship with the land.
German blood, in otherwords, engendered an exclusive claim to the
sacred German soil. While the termblood and soil had been
circulating in vlkisch circles since at least the Wil-helmine era,
it was Darr who rst popularized it as a slogan and then enshrinedit
as a guiding principle of Nazi thought. Harking back to Arndt and
Riehl, heenvisioned a thoroughgoing ruralization of Germany and
Europe, predicated ona revitalized yeoman peasantry, in order to
ensure racial health and ecologicalsustainability.
Darr was one of the partys chief race theorists and was also
instrumentalin galvanizing peasant support for the Nazis during the
critical period of the
36 Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Grostadtfeindschaft, p. 334.
Ernst Nolte makes a similar argumentinThree Faces of Fascism, New
York, 1966, pp. 407408, though the point gets lost somewhat in
thetranslation. See also Norbert Frei, National Socialist Rule in
Germany, Oxford, 1993, p. 56: Thechange in direction towards the
soil had not been an electoral tactic. It was one of the
basicideological elements of National Socialism . . .
37 R. Walther Darr, Um Blut und Boden: Reden und Aufstze,Mnchen,
1939, p. 28. The quote is froma 1930 speech entitled Blood and Soil
as the Foundations of Life of the Nordic Race.
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18
early 1930s. From 1933 until 1942 he held the posts of Reich
Peasant Leader andMinister of Agriculture. This was no minor efdom;
the agriculture ministry hadthe fourth largest budget of all the
myriad Nazi ministries even well into the war.38
From this position Darr was able to lend vital support to
various ecologicallyoriented initiatives. He played an essential
part in unifying the nebulous proto-environmentalist tendencies in
National Socialism:
It was Darr who gave the ill-dened anti-civilization,
anti-liberal, anti-mod-ern and latent anti-urban sentiments of the
Nazi elite a foundation in theagrarian mystique. And it seems as if
Darr had an immense inuence onthe ideology of National Socialism,
as if he was able to articulate signi-cantly more clearly than
before the values system of an agrarian societycontained in Nazi
ideology and above all to legitimate this agrarianmodel and give
Nazi policy a goal that was clearly oriented toward a far-reaching
re-agrarianization.39
This goal was not only quite consonant with imperialist
expansion in the nameof Lebensraum, it was in fact one of its
primary justications, even motivations.In language replete with the
biologistic metaphors of organicism, Darr declared:The concept of
Blood and Soil gives us the moral right to take back as much landin
the East as is necessary to establish a harmony between the body of
our Volkand the geopolitical space.40
Aside from providing green camouage for the colonization of
Eastern Europe,Darr worked to install environmentally sensitive
principles as the very basis ofthe Third Reichs agricultural
policy. Even in its most productivist phases, theseprecepts
remained emblematic of Nazi doctrine. When the Battle for
Production(a scheme to boost the productivity of the agricultural
sector) was proclaimed atthe second Reich Farmers Congress in 1934,
the very rst point in the programread Keep the soil healthy ! But
Darrs most important innovation was theintroduction on a large
scale of organic farming methods, signicantly
labeledlebensgesetzliche Landbauweise, or farming according to the
laws of life. Theterm points up yet again the natural order
ideology which underlies so muchreactionary ecological thought. The
impetus for these unprecedented measurescame from Rudolf Steiners
anthroposophy and its techniques of biodynamiccultivation.41
38 Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century, p. 203. See also Frei,
National Socialist Rule in Germany, p. 57,which stresses that Darrs
total control over agricultural policy constituted a uniquely
powerfulposition within the Nazi system.
39 Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Grostadtfeindschaft, p. 312.40
ibid., p. 308.
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19
The campaign to institutionalize organic farming encompassed
tens of thou-sands of smallholdings and estates across Germany. It
met with considerableresistance from other members of the Nazi
hierarchy, above all Backe and Gring.But Darr, with the help of
Hess and others, was able to sustain the policy until hisforced
resignation in 1942 (an event which had little to do with his
environmental-ist leanings). And these eorts in no sense
represented merely Darrs personalpredilections; as the standard
history of German agricultural policy points out,Hitler and Himmler
were in complete sympathy with these ideas.42 Still, it waslargely
Darrs inuence in the Nazi apparatus which yielded, in practice, a
levelof government support for ecologically sound farming methods
and land useplanning unmatched by any state before or since.
For these reasons Darr has sometimes been regarded as a
forerunner of thecontemporary Green movement. His biographer, in
fact, once referred to himas the father of the Greens.43 Her book
Blood and Soil, undoubtedly the bestsingle source on Darr in either
German or English, consistently downplays thevirulently fascist
elements in his thinking, portraying him instead as a
misguidedagrarian radical. This grave error in judgement indicates
the powerfully disori-enting pull of an ecological aura. Darrs
published writings alone, dating backto the early twenties, are
enough to indict him as a rabidly racist and jingoist ide-ologue
particularly prone to a vulgar and hateful antisemitism (he spoke
of Jews,revealingly, as weeds). His decade-long tenure as a loyal
servant and, moreover,architect of the Nazi state demonstrates his
dedication to Hitlers deranged cause.One account even claims that
it was Darr who convinced Hitler and Himmler ofthe necessity of
exterminating the Jews and Slavs.44 The ecological aspects of
histhought cannot, in sum, be separated from their thoroughly Nazi
framework. Farfrom embodying the redeeming facets of National
Socialism, Darr representsthe baleful specter of ecofascism in
power.
Implementing the Ecofascist Program
It is frequently pointed out that the agrarian and romantic
moments in Nazi ide-ology and policy were in constant tension with,
if not in at contradiction to, the
41 See Haushofer, Ideengeschichte der Agrarwirtschaft, pp.
269271, and Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th
Century, pp. 200206, for the formative inuence of Steinerite
ideas on Darr.42 Haushofer, Ideengeschichte der Agrarwirtschaft, p.
271.43 Anna Bramwell, Darr. Was This Man Father of the Greens?
History Today, September 1984, vol.
34, pp. 713. This repugnant article is one long series of
distortions designed to paint Darr as ananti-Hitler hero an eort as
preposterous as it is loathsome.
44 Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Hess: A Biography,
London, 1971, p. 34.
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20
technocratic-industrialist thrust of the Third Reichs rapid
modernization. Whatis not often remarked is that even these
modernizing tendencies had a signicantecological component. The two
men principally responsible for sustaining thisenvironmentalist
commitment in the midst of intensive industrialization
wereReichsminister Fritz Todt and his aide, the high-level planner
and engineer AlwinSeifert.
Todt was one of the most inuential National Socialists,45
directly responsiblefor questions of technological and industrial
policy. At his death in 1942 heheaded three dierent cabinet-level
ministries in addition to the enormous quasi-ocial Organisation
Todt, and had gathered the major technical tasks of theReich into
his own hands.46 According to his successor, Albert Speer, Todt
lovednature and repeatedly had serious run-ins with Bormann,
protesting againsthis despoiling the landscape around
Obersalzberg.47 Another source calls himsimply an ecologist.48 This
reputation is based chiey on Todts eorts to makeAutobahn
construction one of the largest building enterprises undertaken
inthis century as environmentally sensitive as possible.
The pre-eminent historian of German engineering describes this
commitmentthus: Todt demanded of the completed work of technology a
harmony withnature and with the landscape, thereby fullling modern
ecological principlesof engineering as well as the organological
principles of his own era alongwith their roots in vlkisch
ideology.49 The ecological aspects of this approachto construction
went well beyond an emphasis on harmonious adaptation to thenatural
surroundings for aesthetic reasons; Todt also established strict
criteriafor respecting wetlands, forests and ecologically sensitive
areas. But just aswith Arndt, Riehl and Darr, these
environmentalist concerns were inseparablybound to a
vlkisch-nationalist outlook. Todt himself expressed this
connectionsuccinctly: The fulllment of mere transportation purposes
is not the nal aimof German highway construction. The German
highway must be an expressionof its surrounding landscape and an
expression of the German essence.50
45 Franz Neumann, Behemoth. The Structure and Practice of
National Socialism 19331944, New York,1944, p. 378.
46 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, New York, 1970, p.
263.47 ibid., p. 261.48 Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century, p.
197.49 Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich,
Dsseldorf, 1974, p. 337.50 Quoted in Rolf Peter Sieferle,
Fortschrittsfeinde? Opposition gegen Technik und Industrie von
der
Romantik bis zur Gegenwart, Mnchen, 1984, p. 220. Todt was just
as convinced a Nazi as Darror Hess; on the extent (and pettiness)
of his allegiance to antisemitic policies, see Alan
Beyerchen,Scientists Under Hitler, New Haven, 1977, pages 6668 and
289.
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21
Todts chief advisor and collaborator on environmental issues was
his lieu-tenant Alwin Seifert, whom Todt reportedly once called a
fanatical ecologist.51
Seifert bore the ocial title of Reich Advocate for the
Landscape, but his nick-name within the party was Mr. Mother Earth.
The appellation was deserved;Seifert dreamed of a total conversion
from technology to nature,52 and wouldoften wax lyrical about the
wonders of German nature and the tragedy of hu-mankinds
carelessness. As early as 1934 he wrote to Hess demanding
attentionto water issues and invoking work methods that are more
attuned to nature.53 Indischarging his ocial duties Seifert
stressed the importance of wilderness and en-ergetically opposed
monoculture, wetlands drainage and chemicalized agriculture.He
criticized Darr as too moderate, and called for an agricultural
revolutiontowards a more peasant-like, natural, simple method of
farming, independentof capital.54
With the Third Reichs technological policy entrusted to gures
such as these,even the Nazis massive industrial build-up took on a
distinctively green hue. Theprominence of nature in the partys
philosophical background helped ensure thatmore radical initiatives
often received a sympathetic hearing in the highest ocesof the Nazi
state. In the mid-thirties Todt and Seifert vigorously pushed for
anall-encompassing Reich Law for the Protection of Mother Earth in
order to stemthe steady loss of this irreplaceable basis of all
life.55 Seifert reports that all ofthe ministries were prepared to
co-operate save one; only the minister of theeconomy opposed the
bill because of its impact on mining.
But even near-misses such as these would have been unthinkable
withoutthe support of Reich Chancellor Rudolf Hess, who provided
the green wing ofthe NSDAP a secure anchor at the very top of the
party hierarchy. It would bedicult to overestimate Hesss power and
centrality in the complex governmentalmachinery of the National
Socialist regime. He joined the party in 1920 as member#16, and for
two decades was Hitlers devoted personal deputy. He has
beendescribed as Hitlers closest condant,56 and the Fhrer himself
referred to Hessas his closest advisor.57 Hess was not only the
highest party leader and second in
51 Bramwell, Blood and Soil, p. 173.52 Alwin Seifert, Im
Zeitalter des Lebendigen, Dresden, 1941, p. 13. The books title is
grotesquely inapt
considering the date of publication; it means in the age of the
living.53 Alwin Seifert, Ein Leben fr die Landschaft, Dsseldorf,
1962, p. 100.54 Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century, p. 198.
Bramwell cites Darrs papers as the source of the
internal quote.55 Seifert, Ein Leben fr die Landschaft, p. 90.56
William Shirer, Berlin Diary, New York, 1941, p. 19. Shirer also
calls Hess Hitlers protg (588)
and the only man in the world he fully trusts (587), and
substantiates Darrs and Todts standingas well (590).
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22
line (after Gring) to succeed Hitler; in addition, all
legislation and every decreehad to pass through his oce before
becoming law.
An inveterate nature lover as well as a devout Steinerite, Hess
insisted ona strictly biodynamic diet not even Hitlers rigorous
vegetarian standardswere good enough for him and accepted only
homeopathic medicines. It wasHess who introduced Darr to Hitler,
thus securing the green wing its rstpower base. He was an even more
tenacious proponent of organic farming thanDarr, and pushed the
latter to take more demonstrative steps in support of
thelebensgesetzliche Landbauweise.58 His oce was also directly
responsible for landuse planning across the Reich, employing a
number of specialists who sharedSeiferts ecological approach.59
With Hesss enthusiastic backing, the green wing was able to
achieve itsmost notable successes. As early as March 1933, a wide
array of environmentalistlegislation was approved and implemented
at national, regional and local levels.These measures, which
included reforestation programs, bills protecting animaland plant
species, and preservationist decrees blocking industrial
development,undoubtedly ranked among the most progressive in the
world at that time.60
Planning ordinances were designed for the protection of wildlife
habitat and atthe same time demanded respect for the sacred German
forest. The Nazi statealso created the rst nature preserves in
Europe.
Along with Darrs eorts toward re-agrarianization and support for
organicagriculture, as well as Todt and Seiferts attempts to
institutionalize an envi-ronmentally sensitive land use planning
and industrial policy, the major accom-plishment of the Nazi
ecologists was the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz of 1935. Thiscompletely
unprecedented nature protection law not only established
guide-lines for safeguarding ora, fauna, and natural monuments
across the Reich; italso restricted commercial access to remaining
tracts of wilderness. In addition,the comprehensive ordinance
required all national, state and local ocials toconsult with
Naturschutz authorities in a timely manner before undertaking
anymeasures that would produce fundamental alterations in the
countryside.61
57 Quoted in Manvell and Fraenkel, Hess, p. 80. In a further
remarkable conrmation of the greenfactions stature, Hitler once
declared that Todt and Hess were the only two human beings amongall
those around me to whom I have been truly and inwardly attached
(Hess, p. 132).
58 See Haushofer, Ideengeschichte der Agrarwirtschaft, p. 270,
and Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century,p. 201.
59 ibid., pp. 197200. Most of Todts work also ran through Hesss
oce.60 Raymond Dominick, The Nazis and the Nature
Conservationists,The Historian vol. XLIX no. 4
(August 1987), p. 534.61 ibid., p. 536.
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23
Although the legislations eectiveness was questionable,
traditional Germanenvironmentalists were overjoyed at its passage.
Walter Schoenichen declaredit the denitive fulllment of the
vlkisch-romantic longings,62 and Hans Klose,Schoenichens successor
as head of the Reich Agency for Nature Protection, de-scribed Nazi
environmental policy as the high point of nature protection
inGermany. Perhaps the greatest success of these measures was in
facilitating theintellectual realignment of German Naturschutz and
the integration of main-stream environmentalism into the Nazi
enterprise.63
While the achievements of the green wing were daunting, they
should notbe exaggerated. Ecological initiatives were, of course,
hardly universally popularwithin the party. Goebbels, Bormann, and
Heydrich, for example, were implaca-bly opposed to them, and
considered Darr, Hess and their fellows undependabledreamers,
eccentrics, or simply security risks. This latter suspicion seemed
to beconrmed by Hesss famed ight to Britain in 1941; after that
point, the environ-mentalist tendency was for the most part
suppressed. Todt was killed in a planecrash in February 1942, and
shortly thereafter Darr was stripped of all his posts.For the nal
three years of the Nazi conagration the green wing played noactive
role. Their work, however, had long since left an indelible
stain.
Fascist Ecology in Context
To make this dismaying and discomforting analysis more
palatable, it is tempt-ing to draw precisely the wrong conclusion
namely, that even the most rep-rehensible political undertakings
sometimes produce laudable results. But thereal lesson here is just
the opposite: Even the most laudable of causes can beperverted and
instrumentalized in the service of criminal savagery. The greenwing
of the NSDAP was not a group of innocents, confused and
manipulatedidealists, or reformers from within; they were conscious
promoters and executorsof a vile program explicitly dedicated to
inhuman racist violence, massive politicalrepression and worldwide
military domination. Their ecological involvements,far from
osetting these fundamental commitments, deepened and
radicalizedthem. In the end, their conguration of environmental
politics was directly andsubstantially responsible for organized
mass murder.
No aspect of the Nazi project can be properly understood without
examin-ing its implication in the holocaust. Here, too, ecological
arguments played acrucially malevolent role. Not only did the green
wing refurbish the sanguine
62 Hermand, Grne Utopien in Deutschland, p. 114.63 Dominick, The
Nazis and the Nature Conservationists, p. 529.
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24
antisemitism of traditional reactionary ecology; it catalyzed a
whole new outburstof lurid racist fantasies of organic
inviolability and political revenge. The conu-ence of anti-humanist
dogma with a fetishization of natural purity provided notmerely a
rationale but an incentive for the Third Reichs most heinous
crimes.Its insidious appeal unleashed murderous energies previously
untapped. Finally,the displacement of any social analysis of
environmental destruction in favor ofmystical ecology served as an
integral component in the preparation of the nalsolution:
To explain the destruction of the countryside and environmental
damage,without questioning the German peoples bond to nature, could
only be doneby not analysing environmental damage in a societal
context and by refusingto understand them as an expression of
conicting social interests. Hadthis been done, it would have led to
criticism of National Socialism itselfsince that was not immune to
such forces. One solution was to associatesuch environmental
problems with the destructive inuence of other races.National
Socialism could then be seen to strive for the elimination of
otherraces in order to allow the German peoples innate
understanding and feelingof nature to assert itself, hence securing
a harmonic life close to nature forthe future.64
This is the true legacy of ecofascism in power: genocide
developed into anecessity under the cloak of environment
protection.65
* * *
The experience of the green wing of German fascism is a sobering
reminderof the political volatility of ecology. It certainly does
not indicate any inherent orinevitable connection between
ecological issues and right-wing politics; alongsidethe reactionary
tradition surveyed here, there has always been an equally vital
her-itage of left-libertarian ecology, in Germany as elsewhere.66
But certain patternscan be discerned: While concerns about problems
posed by humankinds in-creasing mastery over nature have
increasingly been shared by ever larger groupsof people embracing a
plethora of ideologies, the most consistent pro-naturalorder
response found political embodiment on the radical right.67 This is
the
64 Grning and Wolschke-Bulmahn, Politics, planning and the
protection of nature, p. 137.65 ibid., p. 138.66 Linses kopax und
Anarchie, among others, oers a detailed consideration of the
history of eco-an-
archism in Germany.67 Pois, National Socialism and the Religion
of Nature, p. 27.
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25
common thread which unites merely conservative or even
supposedly apoliticalmanifestations of environmentalism with the
straightforwardly fascist variety.
The historical record does, to be sure, belie the vacuous claim
that thosewho want to reform society according to nature are
neither left nor right butecologically minded.68 Environmental
themes can be mobilized from the left orfrom the right, indeed they
require an explicit social context if they are to haveany political
valence whatsoever. Ecology alone does not prescribe a politics;
itmust be interpreted, mediated through some theory of society in
order to acquirepolitical meaning. Failure to heed this mediated
interrelationship between thesocial and the ecological is the
hallmark of reactionary ecology.
As noted above, this failure most commonly takes the form of a
call to re-form society according to nature, that is, to formulate
some version of naturalorder or natural law and submit human needs
and actions to it. As a conse-quence, the underlying social
processes and societal structures which constituteand shape peoples
relations with their environment are left unexamined. Suchwillful
ignorance, in turn, obscures the ways in which all conceptions of
nature arethemselves socially produced, and leaves power structures
unquestioned whilesimultaneously providing them with apparently
naturally ordained status. Thusthe substitution of ecomysticism for
clear-sighted social-ecological inquiry hascatastrophic political
repercussions, as the complexity of the society-nature di-alectic
is collapsed into a puried Oneness. An ideologically charged
naturalorder does not leave room for compromise; its claims are
absolute.
For all of these reasons, the slogan advanced by many
contemporary Greens,We are neither right nor left but up front, is
historically naive and politically fatal.The necessary project of
creating an emancipatory ecological politics demands anacute
awareness and understanding of the legacy of classical ecofascism
and itsconceptual continuities with present-day environmental
discourse. An ecologicalorientation alone, outside of a critical
social framework, is dangerously unstable.The record of fascist
ecology shows that under the right conditions such anorientation
can quickly lead to barbarism.
68 Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century, p. 48.
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26
Ecology and the Modernization of Fascismin the German
Ultra-rightby Janet Biehl
It is an incontestable fact that the ecology crisis today is
real. In a vast numberof ways and places, the biosphere of this
planet is undergoing a great deal ofdamage. Parts of the
environment have already been rendered uninhabitablethrough toxic
wastes and nuclear power plant disasters, while systemic
pollution,ozone holes, global warming, and other disasters are
increasingly tearing thefabric on which all life depends. That such
damage is wrought overwhelminglyby corporations in a competitive
international market economy has never beenclearer, while the need
to replace the existing society with one such as socialecology
advances has never been more urgent.1
At a timewhenworsening economic conditions and strong political
disaectionoccur along with ecological dislocations, however,
nationalist and even fascistideas are gaining an increasingly high
prole in Europe, particularly, but not only,in the Federal Republic
of Germany. With social tensions exacerbated, neofascistgroups of
various kinds are winning electoral representation, even as their
looselylinked cohorts commit acts of violence against foreigners.
Such groups, bothskinhead and intellectual, are part of a New Right
that explicitly draws itsideas from classical fascism. They are
updating the old nationalist, mystical, andmisanthropic themes of
the Old Right, writes Jutta Ditfurth, in a modernizationof fascism.
Among other things, they are using a right-wing interpretation
ofecology as an ideological hinge for organizing the extreme-right
and neofascistscene.2
Todays fascists have a distinct ideological legacy from their
fascist forebearsupon which to draw. Indeed, ecology and a mystical
reverence for the naturalworld are hardly new to German
nationalism. At the end of the nineteenth century,a cultural revolt
against positivism swept much of Europe, as George L. Mossewrites,
and in Germany it became infused with both nature-mysticism and
racialnationalism. This revolt
1 On social ecology, see the manywritings of Murray Bookchin,
particularly Remaking Society (Boston:South End Press, 1989) and
Urbanization Without Cities (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992).
2 Jutta Ditfurth, Feuer in die Herzen: Pldoyer fr eine
kologische Linke Opposition (Hamburg: CarlsenVerlag, 1992), part
three, especially pp. 158, 172. Ditfurth was formerly a leading
spokesperson forthe leftists in the German Greens. Now that the
Greens have lost their radicalism, she is currentlyinvolved in
organizing the Ecological Left (kologische Linke) in Frankfurt.
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27
became intimately bound up with a belief in natures cosmic life
force, adark force whose mysteries could be understood, not through
science, butthrough the occult. An ideology based upon such
premises was fused withthe glories of an Aryan past, and in turn,
that past received a thoroughlyromantic and mystical
interpretation.3
Culminating in the 1920s, an assortment of occult and
pseudo-scientic ideascoalesced around the idea of a German Volk
into a romantic nationalism, romanticracism, and a mystical
nature-worshipping faith. Indeed, as Mosse observes, theGerman word
Volk
is a much more comprehensive term than people, for to German
thinkersever since the birth of German romanticism in the late
eighteenth centuryVolk signied the union of a group of people with
a transcendental essence.This essence might be called nature or
cosmos or mythos, but in eachinstance it was fused to mans
innermost nature, and represented the sourceof his creativity, his
depth of feeling, his individuality, and his unity withother
members of the Volk.4
The vlkisch movement of the 1920s regarded modern materialism,
urbanism,rationalism, and science as articial and evil, alien to
this essence.5 In a time ofbitter social dislocation, it sawWeimar
democracy as the product ofWestern demo-cratic and liberal ideals
and, further, as a puppet regime controlled by people whodid not
represent German essence. Many alleged that a Jewish world
conspiracylay behind the discontents of modernism, including
materialistic consumerism,soulless industrialism, a homogenized
commercial culture, and excessive moderntechnology, all of which
were said to be systematically destroying traditionalGerman values.
Only true patriots could save Germans from ruin, thought theextreme
right themselves.
This movement sought to assert a truly Germanic alternative one
as racialistas it was nationalist in nature. The popular writings
of Paul Lagarde and Julius
3 George L. Mosse, The Mystical Origins of National Socialism,
Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 22,no. 1 (Jan. 1961), p. 81.
See also Jerey A. Goldstein, On Racism and Anti-Semitism in
Occultismand Nazism, Yad Vashem Studies 13, Livia Rothkirchen, ed.
(Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1979), pp.5372.
4 George L. Mosse,The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual
Origins of the Third Reich (New York:Grosset and Dunlap, Universal
Library, 1964), p. 4.
5 On the vlkisch movement, see Mosse, Crisis; Fritz Stern,The
Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study inthe Rise of the Germanic
Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1961);and Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German
Youth Movement (New York: BasicBooks, 1962).
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28
Langbehn favored an aristocratic social order in which Germans
would rule theworld. It invoked a nature-romanticism in which a
closeness to the natural land-scape was to give people a heightened
sense of aliveness and authenticity. Itadvanced a new cosmic faith,
embodied in Aryan blood, that was to be graspedthrough intuition
rather than science in a plethora of occult and esoteric
spiritu-alistic faiths that abounded in Germany in the 1920s.
Mystical belief-systems likeTheosophy, Anthroposophy, and Ariosophy
(a mystical Aryanism) abounded andwere rife with Germanic
nationalist components, such that they could be used tomystify an
ecological nationalism.
However inadvertently, the romantic nationalists of the vlkisch
movementbecame an important source for National Socialist ideology,
which ironically drewon its antimodern sentiments even as it built
a technologically modern and viru-lently nationalistic and
genocidal totalitarian state. Demagogically appealing toa very real
sense of alienation, the Nazis stage-managed indoctrination
extrava-ganzas that promised authenticity in a mystical, romantic
nationalism that wascloser to nature, even as they engaged in mass
murder. Stressing the need toreturn to simpler, healthier, and more
natural lifeways, they advanced the ideaand practice of a Nordic
peasantry tied organically to the soil even as theyconstructed a
society that was industrially more modernized and rationalizedthan
any German society had seen to that time.
The so-called New Right today appeals to themes reminiscent of
the vlkischmovement in pre-Nazi Germany. It, too, presents itself
as oering an ecologicalalternative to modern society. In the view
of the New Right today, the destruc-tion of the environment and the
repression of nationalities have a common rootin Semitic monotheism
and universalism. In its later form, Christianity, and inits
subsequent secularized forms, liberalism and Marxism, this
dualistic, homoge-nizing universalism is alleged to have brought on
both the ecological crisis andthe suppression of national identity.
Just as Judeo-Christian universalism wasdestructive of authentic
cultures when Christian missionaries went out into theworld, so too
is modernity eliminating ethnic and national cultures.
Moreover,through the unbridled technology to which it gave rise,
this modern universalismis said to have perpetrated not only the
destruction of nature but an annihilationof the spirit; the
destruction of nature, it is said, is life-threatening in the
spiritualsense as well as the physical, since when people deny
pristine nature, their accessto their authentic self is
blocked.
The dualistic yet universalistic Semitic legacy is borne today
most egregiously,in New Right ideology, by the United States, in
whose mongrel culture egal-itarian democracy all cultures and races
are mixed together, forming a crass,soulless society. American
cultural imperialism is genocidal of other cultures
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29
around the world, and its technological imperialism is
destroying the global envi-ronment. The fascist quest for national
identity and ecological salvation seeksto counter Western
civilization that is, the United States, as opposed to Eu-ropean
civilization by advancing a notion of ethnopluralism that seeks
forall cultures to have sovereignty over themselves and their
environment. Europeshould become, instead of a modernized
monoculture, a Europe of fatherlands,with autonomy for all its
peoples. Just as Turks should live in Turkey and Sene-galese in
Senegal, Germans should have Germany for themselves, New
Rightideologues argue.
Ecology can easily be perverted to justify this ethnopluralism
that is, na-tionalism. Conceptions of ones region as ones homeland,
or Heimat, can beperverted into a nationalistic regionalism when a
regions traditions and languageare mystically tied to an ancestral
landscape. (The word Heimat connotes as wella turn toward the past,
an anti-urban mood, a familiar community, and proximityto nature.
For several decades the concept was looked upon with disfavor
becausethe Nazis had used it, but intellectuals rediscovered it in
the 1970s, after furtherdecades of capitalist industrialization.)
For a people seeking to assert themselvesagainst an outside
intruder, an ecologized Heimat in which they are
biologicallyembedded can become a useful tool not only against
imperialism but against im-migration, foreigners, and
overpopulation. Elaborate justications for opposingThird World
immigration are disguised as diversity, drawing on ecological
argu-ments against overpopulation. Today it is not only fascists
who invoke Heimat;in September 1989, for example, the head of the
respectable League for the Pro-tection of the Environment and
Nature (Bund fr Umwelt- und Naturschutz, orBUND), environmentalist
Hubert Weinzierl, remarked that
only when humanitys main concern, the diminution of the stream
of over-population, has been accomplished, will there be any
meaning or anyprospect of building an environment that is capable
of improvement, ofconguring the landscape of our civilization in
such a way that it remainsworthy of being called Heimat.6
An ecology that is mystical, in turn, may become a justication
for a national-ism that is mystical. In the New Age milieu of
today, with its anities for ecology,the ultra-right may well nd the
mystical component it needs to make a trulyupdated, modernized
authoritarian nationalism. As in Germany between the twoworld wars,
antirational cults of the New Age primitivistic, esoteric
abound
6 Quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 170.
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30
in both the Federal Republic and the Anglo-American world. Such
antirational-ism and mysticism are appealed to by the New Right; as
anarchist publisherWolfgang Haug observes, The New Right, in eect,
wants above all to redenesocial norms so that rational doubt is
regarded as decadent and eliminated, andnew natural norms are
established.7
Neofascist Ecology
Ecology is warped for mystical-nationalist ends by a whole
series of neofascistgroups and parties. Indeed, so multifarious are
the ecofascist parties that havearisen, and so much do their
memberships overlap, that they form what antifascistresearcher
Volkmar Wlk calls an ecofascist network.8 Their
programmaticliterature often combines ecology and nationalism in
ways that are designed toappeal to people who do not consider
themselves fascists, while at the same timethey ideologically
support neo-Nazi street-ghting skinheads who commit actsof violence
against foreigners.
National Revolutionaries9
TheNational Revolutionaries (NRs) manipulatively mix themes of
left and rightin their uses of nationalism and ecology, in an
attempt to cross ideological lines.They draw on an old tenet of
right-wing dissent in Germany the belief thata Third Way between
capitalism and socialism is necessary and that Germanyis
predestined to lead humankind toward it.10 The NRs Third Way is
based onnationalism, a socialism of the specic national way11 in
short, a national
7 Wolfgang Haug, Pogromen beginnen im Kopf, Schwarzer Faden:
Vierteljahreschrift fr Lust undFreiheit [Grafenau]; translated as
Pogroms Begin in the Mind in Green Perspectives, no. 26
(May1992).
8 Volkmar Wlk, Neue Trends im kofaschistischen Netzwerk: Am
Beispiel der Anthroposophen,dem Weltbund zum Schutz des Lebens und
der DP, in In bester Gesellschaft: Antifa-Recherchezwischen
Konservatismus und Neo-faschismus, Raimund Hethey and Peter Kratz,
eds. (Gttingen:Verlag die Werkstatt, 1991). Wlk is a spokesperson
for the VVN/Bund of Antifascists and haspublished widely on
neofascism.
9 Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this section are
from the National Revolutionaries docu-ments Gegen Fremdherrschaft
und Kapital and Grundstze unseres Wollens Die fnache
Revolution(n.d.), as cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, pp. 22830.
10 Walter Laqueur, Germany Today: A Personal Report (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1985), p. 152. Also onStrasserite ideology, see
Mosse, Crisis, pp. 28690.
11 See Hans-Georg Betz, On the GermanQuestion: Left, Right, and
the Politics of National Identity,Radical America, vol. 20, no. 1
(1987), pp. 3048.
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31
socialism. A wing of the NRs today, called the Solidaristen,
identies itself withthe Strasser brothers, two 1920s Nazi Party
members who took the Socialism inNational Socialism seriously and
represented the left anticapitalist wing of theNazis. Today, the
Solidaristen and other NRs regard Otto Strasser in particular asthe
Trotsky of National Socialism because of his 1920s intraparty power
strugglewith Hitler; Hitlers ejection of this fascist in 1930 was,
for them, a betrayal ofNational Socialism.
Todays leading NR ideologist, Henning Eichberg, calls for the
assertion ofnational identity and a liberation nationalism. Seeking
to appeal to left andright, NR publications have supported national
liberation movements from acrossthe traditional political spectrum,
including the Irish, Basques, Ukrainians, andAfghans, as well as
Sandinistas.12 They regarded divided Germany as an occupiedcountry,
the result of the imperialist politics of the occupation forces,
and theysought to liberate it including Austria. Now that Germany
has been freedfrom this occupation, the National Revolutionaries
are free to concentrate onreunifying with Austria.
Eichberg regards Judeo-Christianity as the ultimate root of all
present evils,since it is overly intellectual and alienates
humanity both from itself and fromthe divine; it neglects the
emotions and the body. Tied in as it is with the logic
ofproductivism, Christianity, Eichberg writes, is the religion of
growth that mustbe fought at all costs. To help cultivate national
identity, he proposes instead anew religion that mixes together
neopagan Germanic, Celtic, and Indian religionswith old
vlkisch-nationalistic ideas. It is to be based on the
sensuality-physicalityof dance and ritual, ceremony and taboo,
meditation, prayer, and ecstasy. Inessence, [this religion]
constitutes itself as a form of praxis against the religionof
growth since its sensuous counter-experiences can restore humanity
tocloser contact with nature. Sounding like many New Agers in the
United States,Eichberg calls for a return to pristine nature, to
the alleged primordial sources ofpeoples lives, psyches, and
authentic cultures, and for people to heal themselveswithin as part
of healing the ecological crisis, overcoming their own
alienation,and rediscovering themselves.13
National Revolutionaries exploit ecological themes not only to
construct primi-tivistic New Age religions but for political
activity as well. During the 1970s they
12 See Betz, On the GermanQuestion.13 Henning Eichberg,
Produktivistische Mythen: Etwas ber die Religion in der
Industriekultur, in
Zurck zur Natur-Religion? Holger Schleip, ed. (Freiburg: Hermann
Bauer Verlag, 1986). EditorSchleip is, ironically, a member both of
the Greens and of the vlkisch-racist sect Deutsche Unitarier;the
publisher, Hermann Bauer Verlag, is the largest New Age publisher
in Germany. The content ofEichbergs article is summarized in Wlk,
Neue Trends, p. 126.
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32
organized around opposition to nuclear energy at about the same
time as the citi-zens initiative movement did. With their
ecological and antinuclear enthusiasm,observes Walter Laqueur,
their cultural anti-Americanism and their support for movements
of nationalliberation in many parts of the world, the national
revolutionaries tried, infact, to outank their left-wing
contemporaries. Some regarded Sinn Fein asa model for the German
national revolutionaries, others suggested politi-cal Balkanization
in Germany and Europe as a solution to all
outstandingquestions.14
Other National Revolutionaries took a dierent political
approach: at the endof the 1970s, they joined the newly emerging
Greens, where some of their numbersucceeded in holding oce for a
time. In October 1980, the Alternative List ofWest Berlin, for one,
decided they could not work with National Revolutionaries,whom they
considered even more dangerous than overt neo-Nazis because theyhid
their true intentions behind a veil of grassroots democratic and
ecologicalprograms. They were mostly driven out of the Greens, at
least as far as observersseem aware today.15
The Freedom German Workers Party16
Like the National Revolutionaries, the Freedom German Workers
Party (Frei-heitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or FAP) calls for a
national socialism, albeitone based on a sense of community instead
of class struggle. The FAP seeks norapprochement with leftists; it
openly and militantly proclaims its support forNazi ideas,
celebrates race and nation, and is pro-Hitler rather than
Strasserite.It praises German soldiers, whose achievements in two
world wars will stillbe admired in a thousand years. The FAP is
largely controlled by The Movement
14 Laqueur, Germany Today, p. 153. Laqueur cites Henning
Eichberg, Balkanisierung fr jedermann,in the National
Revolutionaries periodicalWir Selbst, a journal for national
identity and interna-tional solidarity (May-June 1983). The German
right has been interested in the IRA since the 1920s;the title of
this journal,Wir Selbst (we ourselves), is a translation of Sinn
Fein.
15 See Betz, On the GermanQuestion, pp. 4546; and Wlk, Neue
Trends, p. 123.16 Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this
section are from the FAPs Action Program (15 Aug.
1990); the FAP charter (15 Aug. 1989); Basic Principles and
Goals of the FAP Electoral Programfor Rhineland-Westphalia (n.d.);
and Overview of Members of the Party Executive Committeefor the
Provincial Associations (15 Aug. 1990), all as cited in Ditfurth,
Feuer, p. 229. [Since early1993, when this article was originally
written, the FAP has been banned in the Federal Republic.]
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33
(Die Bewegung), which seeks to reestablish the NSDAP (the Nazi
Party) in theFederal Republic and unite all fascist groups under
its aegis.17
The FAP recruits from among skinheads and soccer fans, and its
activitiesinclude acts of violence, arson, and racial attacks on
foreigners. It advances thecrudest Germany for Germans foreigners
out slogans.18 When it engages inelectoral activity, its
programmatic demands have included German jobs forGerman workers,
repatriation for foreigners, no franchise for foreigners, andan end
to the crazy enthusiasm for integration.19 Germans today must not
ruinthe legacy of our fathers, the cultural landscape;
Alsace-Lorraine, the SouthTyrol, and Austria should all be returned
to Germany.
FAP Nazis especially loathe humanistically oriented
cosmopolitanism. Marx-ism, liberalism, and Christianity have torn
humanity from its connectedness tothe natural cycles of our earth.
No technical environmentalism will succeedagainst the increasingly
obvious ecological catastrophe, they believe. Rather,the disrupted
relations between humanity and the rest of nature require
anecological revolution and a radical revolution in consciousness
that will leadhumanity to a reintegration with the structure of
planetary life. We need a newethics, they maintain, one in which
humanity, animals and nature are regardedas a unity. Animals are
not things but are life-forms that feel joy and painand need our
protection. Not surprisingly, the FAP regards abortion as a
crimeagainst the laws of a healthy nature and against God.
In a blatant self-contradiction, their concrete environmental
demands are infact friendly to capitalism: They want continued
economic growth, yet lessprot-seeking. Ecological necessities . . .
must be brought into accordance witha functioning economy, they
believe, while the cyclical system of nature should. . . be
incorporated into the economic realm.
17 See Christopher T. Husbands, Militant Neo-Nazism in the
Federal Republic of Germany in the1960s, in Neo-Fascism in Europe,
Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan, eds.(Essex:
Longman Group, UK Limited, 1991).
18 See Husbands, Militant Neo-Nazism.19 Husbands, Militant
Neo-Nazism, p. 96.
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34
The Republicans20
The Republicans, a political party founded by former Waen-SS
member FranzSchnhuber in 1983, have made numerous disavowals of any
association withthe Nazis they present themselves as nothing more
than a community of Ger-man patriots. Yet this does not stop them
from taking explicitly anti-immigrantstances, especially against
Turks, or from exploiting discontents about the inuxof foreigners
generally, or from maintaining that Germany should be for Ger-mans.
The presence of a tidal wave of asylum-seekers in the Federal
Republic,they believe, causes the importation of criminals, social
tensions, and nancialburdens.
The Republicans call for the preservation of the existence of
the German Volk,its health and its ecological living-space
[Lebensraum] as a priority for domesticpolicy. This goal, they add,
will also foster environmental protection. Indeed,ecological
dislocations are endangering Germans health and by health theymean
the genetic health of the German people. Such health has a
highervalue than short-term prots and striving for a standard of
living. Protecting andmaintaining a healthy environment not only
assures the security of the meansof life of our people but is a
patriotic duty. The Republicans are stringentlyantiabortion for
German women, yet for the Third World, meaningful familyplanning is
necessary to end the population explosion and its consequent
threatto the environment; without it there will be natural
catastrophe and starvation.
The National Democratic Party21
The National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische
ParteiDeutschlands, or NPD), founded in 1964 mainly by people who
had been activeNazis before 1945, rose to prominence during the
1960s. This aggressively nation-alist party long called for German
reunication, while its programmatic literaturecomplains that two
wars within one generation . . . have eaten away at the
20 Quotations in this section are from the basic program of the
Republicans, adopted at their rstfederal congress (26 Nov. 1983) in
Munich; the 1987 program of the Republicans; Ja zu Europa Nein zu
dieser EG Deutsche Interessen haben Vorrang, the Dinkelsbhl
Declaration of theRepublicans for the European elections of 1979;
and the 1990 party program of the Republicans, allas cited in
Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 228.
21 Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this section are
from the NPDs 1973 Dsseldorf program;the 1988Wurfsendung of the
NPD; and the NPD newspaper Deutsche Stimme 45 ( 1992), all as
citedin Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 228. On the NPD generally, see David
Childs, The Far Right in GermanySince 1945, in Neo-Fascism in
Europe, Cheles, Ferguson, and Vaughan, eds.
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35
substantive health of the German people. (It does not mention
what those warsdid to the Jews, as Ditfurth dryly notes.) The NPD
laments the destruction ofthe environment, which has
disadvantageous eects on the Volk-health. Ger-mans should not be
exposed to chemical dyes and should be protected fromcongenital
illness, while people with AIDS should be required to register.
Thepreservation of the German people requires that German women
prolicallygive birth, and therefore the NPD is against the
devaluation and destructionof the family. Since abortion
threatens